Lame-duck Bush goes daffy

When US president George W Bush praises Democratic speaker Nancy Pelosi for her leadership, as he did over the “stimulus package” he proposed, you know something bad just happened. When Pelosi beams broadly, and places emphasis on how the measures are “temporary”, you just know she means, “when the election is over, you’ll be paying for it, you gullible fools”. If there’s anything more distasteful than a misguided but principled partisan proposal, it’s a waffly but expensive bi-partisan cop-out.

I couldn’t do a better job of demolishing the latest fiscal abortion than Kimberley Strassel, in Bush’s Economic Surrender. This editorial doesn’t do a bad job either. Bush has failed his citizens. Bush has failed his economic principles. Bush has failed the GOP candidates. Bush has failed the cause of sane tax policy. No stimulus at all would have been a better option than this ill-disguised redistributionist handout. Arthur Laffer, he of the famous Laffer Curve, follows on with an admirable explanation of how tax works in the real world, unpolluted by deal-making politicians.

So, I take back what I said about Bush. He may still have been the sheriff in DC in 2007, but it’s 2008 now, and he’s shaping up to be a lame duck, alright.